Prozorov , S 2017 , ' Like a thief in the night : Agamben, Hobbes and the messianic transvaluation of security ' , Security dialogue , vol. 48 , no. 6 , pp. 473-487 . https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010617728602
Title: | Like a thief in the night : Agamben, Hobbes and the messianic transvaluation of security |
Author: | Prozorov, Sergei |
Contributor organization: | Department of Political and Economic Studies (2010-2017) Political Science |
Date: | 2017-12 |
Language: | eng |
Number of pages: | 15 |
Belongs to series: | Security dialogue |
ISSN: | 0967-0106 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010617728602 |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10138/231199 |
Abstract: | The article addresses the reinterpretation of the problematic of security in the messianic turn in contemporary continental political thought. I focus on Giorgio Agamben's reinterpretation of Hobbes's Leviathan in Stasis, which restores an eschatological dimension to this foundational text of modern security politics. Hobbes's commonwealth has been traditionally read as a secularized version of the katechon, a force that restrains the state of nature while drawing on its resources. Instead, Agamben argues that for Hobbes, the state is neither the analogue of God's kingdom on earth nor the katechon that delays its arrival, but the profane power that will disappear when the kingdom of God is established on earth. It is thus in principle incapable of attaining the peace and security that it claims to provide, perpetually producing insecurity and violence in the guise of protection. In Agamben's reading, it is precisely this failure of the state's security apparatuses that assists the advent of the messianic event in an oblique fashion. The exposure of this failure does not aspire to the improvement of the apparatuses of security or resign us to inescapable insecurity but only affirms the need to render the present apparatuses inoperative, bringing forth a future without them. |
Subject: |
Giorgio Agamben
Walter Benjamin Thomas Hobbes messianism political theology security RESILIENCE 517 Political science |
Peer reviewed: | Yes |
Rights: | other |
Usage restriction: | openAccess |
Self-archived version: | acceptedVersion |
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